Rice Jr. spent this past season playing with the D-League’s Rio Grande Valley Vipers where, on multiple occasions throughout the season, players are required to attend Team Awareness Meetings that help them transition to a life of playing professional basketball. That wasn’t the first time he’d heard the information presented last week either, though, because his father — a 15-year NBA veteran and three-time All-Star — had already been hammering responsibility, finances and the dangers of drugs into his son from an early age.

The younger Rice was still able to find new knowledge at last week’s program, though, telling the Washington Post’s Michael Lee that it helped to hear about how other players faced adversity with their role.

“The thing that stuck out to me was when we got to talk to some of the players and hear some of their biggest challenges, how they went through facing them and that kind of stuff,” Rice said. “For example, not playing that much. Jarrett Jack was there. Jerry Stackhouse was there and he was mentioning, whatever your role, whether minimum or large. I think that was the biggest thing that stuck out to me. Because as they said, some people in the league have never had to take a backseat, have never had to worry about not getting significant minutes and I was like, ‘I already been through that.’ ”

Rice could have trouble just finding a role in Washington this year considering his experience in the D-League had him playing as a sort-of stretch-four in new Toronto Raptors’ assistant Nick Nurse’s offense. Once he finds a position — which will likely be the small forward — fellow rookie Otto Porter, along with Trevor Ariza, Chris Singleton and Martell Webster, will all likely be ahead of him on the Wizards’ depth chart to begin the season.

The younger Rice likely isn’t going to find the success his father did during his career, but it’s nice to see that he seems ready for the challenges that lie ahead.

Oklahoma City traded for Victor Oladipo out of Orlando to be their third scorer, behind Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. It didn’t exactly work out that way, Durant bolted town and when Westbrook went off Oladipo was looking for a place to fit in.

That place turned out to be the Pacers.

Oladipo has been playing like an All-Star this season with Indiana, and last week he was key in snapping Cleveland’s 13 game win streak, then turned around and dropped 47 points on Denver. For the week he averaged 35.7 points a game, shot 45.7 percent from three, plus grabbed 7.7 rebounds per game.